SI.20.003 – Predictive Real time Integrated Smart Control of Operations and Planning (PERISCOP) for Manufacturers

Industry 4.0 is changing manufacturing. Dutch high-tech manufacturers require drastically changes in production, inventory, and maintenance planning and quality control. Manufacturers need to redesign their way of working to enable vertical and horizontal integration in a connected, smart, adaptive, and collaborative manner and eliminate non-value adding activities. Yet, manufacturers face many challenges: First, manufacturers use several software applications, e.g., manufacturing execution (ME) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, to monitor and control their manufacturing processes. Those solutions are not compatible with each other, preventing them to get a clear overview. Second, manufacturers struggle to transfer the data in these systems into intelligent information that can be useful for decision-making. Third, changing existing infrastructures can be expensive and time consuming; therefore, there is also a need for smooth transition. In this project, we develop PERISCOP, a generic framework for plug-and-play (PnP) software solutions that can be integrated with different ME and ERP systems and software solutions. The framework is developed and validated in collaboration with manufacturers at different adaptation levels of Industry 4.0. We focus on SMEs, which are struggling with the steps towards digitalisation yet also by testing the framework with large manufacturers. The research addresses the following issues linked to connectivity: which data to collect and use; how to integrate the data with different protocols; how to analyze it to generate useful information; how to use this newly available information for real-time optimal decision-making; how to facilitate integration with tactical level planning; what sort of business and data security models we need for vertical and horizontal integration. We aim to contribute to the transformation of Dutch manufacturers into factories of the future with PERISCOP for plug-and-play software solutions, and addressing the issues regarding connectivity.

Keywords

Data analytics, Data connectivity, Decision making, Industry 4.0, plug-and-play software solutions, Smart manufacturing, Vertical and horizontal integration

Other organisations

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Fraunhofer Project Center, Saxion university of applied sciences, SMEs